Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine discovered that metformin, the widely used diabetes drug, works directly in the brain by switching off a protein called Rap1 in the hypothalamus, activating specific neurons that help lower blood sugar even at tiny doses. The finding, after more than 60 years of clinical use, opens new avenues for more targeted diabetes therapies.^[1]

The 2026 Europhysics Prize has been awarded to physicists Jairo Sinova, Libor Šmejkal, and Tomas Jungwirth for discovering altermagnetism—a third fundamental class of collinear magnetism alongside ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism. The discovery overturns a century-old understanding of magnetic order and could enable new ultrafast spintronic technologies.^[2]

Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope identified a new giant exoplanet, Beta Pictoris d, in the well-studied Beta Pictoris system, detecting it through atmospheric spectroscopy rather than direct imaging. The planet had been hiding in archival observations spanning more than a decade.^[3]

A U.S.-Russian space crew landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Sunday after an eight-month stint aboard the International Space Station, returning NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev after completing 3,856 orbits.^[4]

President Emmanuel Macron vowed to rebuild areas devastated by wildfires in southwest France, where flames have ravaged 42,000 hectares of pine forest near Bordeaux and destroyed 240 homes since last week. In Spain, authorities described the fire around Avila as a "monster" encompassing 77,000 hectares.^[5]

South Korea raised its 2026 economic growth forecast from 2 percent to 3 percent and unveiled plans to transform the current semiconductor boom into lasting growth potential for the economy.^[6]

Scientists at Max Delbrück Center redesigned MRI hardware using metamaterials, allowing existing scanners to produce clearer images of difficult-to-see body parts in less time. The breakthrough could improve diagnoses, make scans more comfortable, and open new medical imaging applications.^[7]

A man has been arrested in Russia on accusations of spying for New Zealand. Russia's Federal Security Service said it had identified a Khabarovsk resident who allegedly established contact with New Zealand's intelligence services, which are part of the Five Eyes alliance.^[8]